I've read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly, and a collection of his short stories and while he's a very good author, I just find the spirit of his work so depressing. I don't want to read more.
Yet the book is full of subtle humor, and a profound understanding of individuals' tragedy at the same time.
There is a great movie made after the novel, with the same name. The movie does capture the spirit of the book, even as switching the medium, a noteworthy achievement.
Like most famous sci-fi writers, Phillip K. Dick likely worried about the things he wrote about and hoped technologists would take it as advice against when faced with the same choices as the people in the stories.
e.g., remember when Horselover Fat gets beamed secret information from a faraway satellite through a pink light to his forehead? Or when he learns we are secretly still living in first century Rome? Both things that PKD actually believed happened to him.
The lucidity with which PKD explored his mental illness in VALIS is pretty extraordinary.
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I reflected on this and realised that he's right. In his stories the hero often courageously penetrates through the facade and gets to the truth of things. What's more, there is generally an objective truth underneath the facade. It's not turtles all the way down. There is a reasonable explanation and once the hero figures it out they manage to take some control of their own destiny.
But it's very Star Trekky, full of hope of "doing better" even when failing at times, and much unlike everything else I've watched! And I love it!!
One of the most fascinating writers in history, I think, but can definitely be depressing to read sometimes.
I don't. I think he paints up depressing worlds often, but there's also a spirit of perseverance, of ingenuity, of "life goes on". His characters are occasionally soldiers, but more often workers and everyday people doing their things. In a Nazi alt-history dystopia, he takes the time to explain how an antiquarian earns his living. [1]
In some dystopia were mankind loses a war against aliens, he makes the aliens sympathetic enough to give the remaining humans a fiction to believe in that will make them want to keep on living. The aliens are also quite forgiving and want to rebuild Earth after the war. [2]
When robots take over humanity, hidden in underground caves after a terrible war between the East and the West Blocs, they are actually hiding the fact they rebuilt the world and it's green and healthy, ready for us to re-enter it. [3]
When an alien invader supplants the horrible husband of the woman protagonist, she finds the alien is actually loving and caring, and prefers it to her husband. [4]
When a (possibly deranged) dog sees threats to the family it loves in everyday things, like the milkman or the garbage truck "stealing their garbage", it does this out of love and fierce loyalty -- however misplaced. [5] (or is it..?)
When an authoritarian interstellar military force wants to punish Earth for having ruined it all, those cheeky earthers invent an elusive rebel leader, Benny Cemoli, and pin all the blame on him; keeping the military force occupied chasing ghosts seemingly forever. [6]
When an underhanded authoritarian government is shaping up covertly in Callisto, Earth agents find the way to dismantle it -- and in the process, PKD shows his vision that there's no concept as absurd and easy to subvert as the concept of "a just war". The good guys win though. [7]
I agree PKD often imagined visions of dystopian hell, but he just as often offered nuggets of hope and everyday life. A bit like Bradbury, only more surreal.
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[1] "The Man in the High Castle"
[2] "Precious Artifact"
[3] Can't remember the title of this one, sorry
[4] Also cannot remember the title. It was included as an episode of PKD's Electric Dreams.
[5] "Roog"
[6] "If there were no Benny Cemoli"
[7] "The mold of Yancy"
I find most (maybe all?) of PKD's novels were born of a short story with the same theme.